Mobile opportunities

A new report released by Textlocal, one of the UK’s leading SMS platforms, reveals that mobile opportunities are set to revolutionise the industry as operators increasingly embrace the SMS platform to help drive activity and integration.

It was found that 59% of the UK’s digital buyers make their purchases on mobile devices and the scale of the opportunity is highlighted by Ofcom figures that estimate there are now more than 80m mobile phones in circulation in the UK for the first time.

The growth in smartphone usage and technological advancements have radically transformed the way British consumers behave and how businesses engage with them. 17% of respondents surveyed by Textlocal revealed that they would be open to receiving SMS communications from retailers once a week or more, with 27% of opt-ins having purchased a good or service as a direct result of receiving a text – either prompting the user to go in-store, using an alternate device to complete the purchase or via their mobile device.

Then there is San Francisco-based merchandise value marketplace, Wish.com, co-founded in 2010 by former Google software engineer Peter Szulczewski and Yahoo engineer Danny Zhang.

The business is designed to cater to what Szulczewski refers to as the “invisible half” of US shoppers, who want to shop online and on their mobiles, but do not have much spare cash and prioritise price over delivery times and product quality. Wish has more than 200 million customers worldwide – 20 million of them in the UK – with 5 million active customers and 250,000 new customers daily.

Wish hosts third-party sellers on its platform, has a similar layout to Pinterest and harvests many of its customers via social media marketing. It is the second biggest app advertiser of Facebook, sixth on Google and fourth on Pinterest in Q2 2017.